SELECTED WRITING

by
Russell Bittner

JANUARY

Let’s dim the lights and flog the floor,
then show our grousing guests the door
and bid a fond farewell to gay December.

Then will you take that holly down
and help me deck these halls with brown
to rid what I would rather now dismember?

If then, with axe, we broach the bin
and strike upon some lode of gin,
can we then seal within this dumbed-down season?

and give ourselves what better serves
the tra-la-la of tinseled nerves –
to wit: a cause célèbre for our numbed reason?

© Russell Bittner

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FEBRUARY

My cat walks in on foggy feet,
and I light up like Frost.
She slurs a purr – like dykes in heat
at face-off in Lacrosse.

With marbled eyes, she looks askance,
as if to say ‘How twee
that you should now romance a dance
that Sandburg wrote for me’ –

which then reminds me that her nails
might profit from a clipper;
but as no sharper tool avails,
I lay siege with a slipper

which, flung in haste, cannot erase
my misplaced attribution.
And yet she’s just a cat, I think,
while I know execution!

“You sound like Pound,” however stern,
turns liquid with conviction –
as I know solecisms earn
the Academy’s eviction.

That Frost is more at ease with fog
is to my cat not new,
since she views skewering similes
as what poor poets do.

And yet, if cats are what it takes
to shake up my redaction,
just like the grave, I’ll grind this knave
with strophes into retraction.

© Russell Bittner

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MARCH

This winter’s mad-dog clutches
snatched away my last good tea,
then carried off my crutches
and ate up my do-re-mi.

So, Lordie, if that’s all ya got
of life on one short shelf,
I think I’ll find some warmer spot
on which to sun myself.

In truth, my kind don’t give a damn
about the world’s widgets,
‘cause living here, out on the lam,
we can’t connect the digits.

So if that’s it, and if this pit
ain’t nothing but a ruse,
allow me first to bitch a bit
before I self-abuse.

It’s true that what I wanted
wasn’t quite the thing I got,
since here, I hit the skids galore
as tongue-tied polyglot.

A shame, too, that I simply can’t
produce some better skit,
as that might put my silly rant
to bed before I split

to babble with the best of ‘em
of mierda, Scheiß’, гавно –
and then, conclude my stratagem
with brummagem ‘no show.’

© Russell Bittner

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APRIL

It’s April again, with its wretched refrain
of the taxman, who cometh a-calling.
Am I then to blame if I shoulder the shame
of his short-list, on which we keep falling?

I don’t doubt he’s right; after all, there’s tonight
when with you I’d much rather be balling –
since like Mother Earth, we’ve some sense of the worth
of what he and his own wife find galling.

And so, we restrain our critique of the rain
as the reason we’re both now recalling
that May days and flowers are grateful for showers
that taxmen regard as appalling.

But try as he might to ignite us tonight
for sedition, perdition and stalling,
we both know this human just lacks the acumen
to amortize amorous mauling.

© Russell Bittner

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CAVEAT POETA: LECTORES MORDENT

Adults have little yen to read,
and even less to deconstruct,
so let your work find wings to speed
like water through an aqueduct.

Now if your piece behooves a chew,
because odd parts feel clotted,
we’re apt to think your retinue
will opt for fuel less solid.

If riddled wit then gives the slip
to bits still feeling fecal,
these may becloud your clever clip
with dense and senseless treacle.

And if your lines lisp Derrida
in stanzas too inflected,
our dodo crew, like dear Dada,
may deem your verse ‘affected.’

So show some flair, Apollinaire,
lest word-stews turn out fetid.
And take, for fuck’s sake, proper care
with expletives deleted!

As Browning meant, but didn’t say
of a ranter’s anguished gasp:
your will to reach – feet stuck in clay –
may just exceed your grasp.

© Russell Bittner

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GIRL FROM BAKU

I once idly wandered the wharfs of New York,
carousing like Carroll, but hunting for snork,
and saw there a girl set to pass on review:
a petulant pet parvenue.

I curtailed my search on a quay in Paree
for a French lass du jour (but who’d toujours love me);
instead, vowed to wow this “génue” from Baku
to love me till death us undo.

She sent me away – a degenerate jerk,
to diddle with donkeys in dingy Dunkirk,
or else, to get clued in on ewes from Baku,
who do it with didgeridoo.

And so from Москва, where I’d spied in a spa
a spry thing from Riga in sporty red bra,
I spewed the news home to my girl from Baku,
who milked it like one mad emu.

I next found a floozie in boozie Berlin.
“Just try her!” I hawked with Catullian grin.
“Refreshingly hip!” quipped my girl from Baku,
forgetting that I’d had her, too.

I then stripped a kid of his id in Madrid,
who’d offered me whores as baksheesh for my bid
to find him a strumpety girl from Baku
as fetching as my Guinea Pooh.

I last hooked some kink in the heart of Helsink’ –
a pert pair who plied me with VSOPink.
I flung both Finns out for my girl from Baku…
who finished me off with ‘Fuck you!’

© Russell Bittner

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LAST EXIT

We look at the menu, but it’s only a formality. We already know what we’re up against: a Siren of a thing this restaurant calls ‘Love Boat,’ which is a collection of sushi-and-sashimi-for-two the three of us have never been able to resist – and so we don’t even now.

We chat – just like old times – and the kiddoes occasionally squabble. Normal for siblings, I think. And I’m quietly thankful for the familiarity – which still has the nice ring of ‘family,’ even if the ‘concept’ is a rip tide moving steadily, irrevocably, out to sea. I feel myself drifting with it, but trying to hold fast to pylons for the duration.

‘Love Boat’ finally arrives, and we dig in. Eager mouths attach to love-in-a-boat, and the earlier testiness disappears from the table. My two babies are now just taking on fuel against a cold February night. I love their greediness, which is a father’s delight to be able to satisfy.

But my delight is on a clock, and that clock has now ticked out.

We conclude with Green Tea and Red Bean ice cream: exotica beyond mere flavors or colors in this frigid time of year. I ask for the check, lay down a cool hundred – my last for the privilege of a ‘Love Boat’ – and we stand up to leave.

“You’re going straight home?” my little guy asks. I lie, tell him yes. We walk two blocks to their front gate, and his sister says “goodnight.” He knows, however, that an entrance to the park is just another block away and insists on walking me to the subway stop. It’s a park, he already knows, in which one can easily lose oneself on a winter’s night – a park asleep, a park apart, a park of no necessary exit. There was a time, he knows, when I walked – sometimes slept – there late at night, quite apart, looking perhaps for a last, fast exit.

We walk to the subway stop. He waits at the top, I imagine, until he’s heard “goodnight” from me and a click from the turnstile – until he knows I’m going straight home.

“I’ll call you” is the last thing I hear from him, and I know he means it. This is his watch, and he’ll want to verify that I’ve gone nowhere else, not to any last exit, nowhere but home – at least tonight.

© Russell Bittner

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FLIGHT 103 TO LOCKERBIE: HAPPY ANNIVERSARY

I have a bit of storm outside my window;
it’s weather, pure and simple: just release.
Are these the gales that split the skies of Scotland
that blast that took her children piece by piece?

My bit of storm, quite spent, is now reclining
upon the house, turned inward from the sea.
Our naked coast lies warm and under cover
of snow-drift sheets, a gift from Lockerbie.

From Galloway, cross Dumphries’ frozen meadows,
through Strathclyde, teasing heathers down below,
just out of view, the Channel’s wildly reeling
from blows of wind and punches packing snow.

You see, my bit of storm is simple comfort:
my children sleep beside me on the floor.
I’m not that mother rocking still at daybreak
with hopes on hinges, staring at the door.

© Russell Bittner

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EPITAPH: TO MY CHILDREN

You are, grave girl, my daughter,
and you, brave boy, my son.
No writ shall write – however rote –
this felicitous fact undone.

From first orgasmic moment
till the three of us lie dead,
our thread shall not be broken,
nor the rigor of it gainsaid.

Your sperm are mine, re-booted;
your egg, my alter-egg.
And not one drop shall be denied
unless you both renege.

You’re a splash of my libido,
and a dash of my posthaste,
a burst of brash albedo,
élan vital to taste.

You are, bright boy, my scholar,
and you, sprite girl, my sun;
now let the brace of you declare:
the game has just begun!

© Russell Bittner

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SHOULD I MISS HER NOW IN WINTER?

I found her first in spring, chained to the moon, holed up at home,
as the stars, like gangsters, stood upon her transom.
Then I searched for her in vain, when the earth began to moan
at the punishment they sought in lieu of ransom.

I met her once again beneath unsteady summer bower,
as her Swedish sun slept idly by horizon.
I knew that she would go then, when the scented wind turned sour,
and her sea could only wave in cold abandon.

I next lost sight of her, when the trees of fall required
that my bells of Brooklyn toll to hers of Gotham.
I saw her knowing smile as the Northern Lights retired –
as those lights ran back to Bäck and took her with them.

So, should I miss her now, when this quilt of snow recalls
how once we’d lie beneath her covers in Elyseum?
Indeed, our lie’s revealed, when that bold-faced moon of spring
outlines our bed, now aptly turned to mausoleum.

© Russell Bittner

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SAD SAPS

We muddle through the middle months,
both hunkered down in hut
of blithe, equanimous equinox,
no friend to hustle – but

it’s time to see the race renewed
as we set sail for solstice,
where darker days will soon collude
to mock the muscle of us.

If then I militate too much
and scratch your itch to kill,
let’s not, like birds, kick out the clutch,
our time’s not over till

the daylight gapes as evening drapes
her arms round sun’s bright chest,
and pries from moon a prurient swoon
bestirring Bowdler’s best

to expurgate the bawdy bits
that whet our frumpish whims,
as burly winter scarifies
and surly summer skims

the fat from feisty equinox
to leave her body bare,
alone to sway like castaway
cut off from autumn’s care

or spring’s attempt to countermand
crude summer’s rude request:
that winter’s wine-roused watchmen
get acquainted with their guest.

© Russell Bittner

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THE REAL OBJECT OF HER AFFECTIONS

Was not, nor is, nor yet shall be
some piddling thing too flagrantly
displayed for sale that she might buy,
and by her purchase satisfy

the loss that only time will heal
as things, an sich, cannot anneal
the heart of one mad-lonely tart,
who now with needy shopping cart

goes screaming down the aisle –
to pick and pluck from every pile
a swatch of this, a scrap of that,
like discount-addled acrobat

or coupon tatterdemalion,
turned sale-struck abecedarian.
At which point, thoughts of quiddity
are cuffed by her cupidity

as frenzied cart goes all amuck,
she’s heart - and cartless, out of luck,
without the stuff to lick the gloss
off lips that merely lisp the loss

of matters that would seal her fate –
hence, far too late to promulgate
some principle by which she might
reclaim decorum, quit the site

and take her shopping spree ashore
where beach requires nothing more
than Cambrian simplicity,
a loaf of sand, a jug of sea,

and thee – pre-Crusoe non-imposter,
with whom she might then prosper,
while heeding need of hungry heart
(archenemy of shopper’s cart)

© Russell Bittner

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COLD

A coxcomb cold, so I’ve been told,
will mope around and natter,
then step right up and tap your glass
whose mass it means to shatter.

But let’s consider one small point
as panes commence to clatter
like tittering birds atop tall trees –
a class content to chatter

about some starlet’s slow decline,
as paparazzi scatter
to photograph a younger lass
whose ass they’d rather flatter.

And if in jest, there is a gist –
some pith to all my patter
re: photogs’ uncouth cameras,
it’s this – forget the latter.

‘Cause getting fat, or poor, or old –
endemic to a ratter –
are not much more than muddled means
to end the tired matter.

© Russell Bittner

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NARCISSUS’ FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH ECHO AT THE WEEPING WELL

You would now trade, a voice cries up,
your moon-bright night for me?
Not yet, I say, I still crave light
to find the one loved me.

Is she not gone? that voice now brays
like rasps on irony.
She came; she looked; we reflected.
Then cooed in symmetry.

Such love should know a sticking point!
voice rails in mockery,
till well’s rank cant falls back to earth
in thrall to gravity.

She bade me sing,I call within,
a hymn to Coventry.
So I obliged and rained like bombs
in hard-shelled mimicry.

And now you try to cobble words?
voice cackles captiously.
As if with tea and tepid prose
you might win sympathy?

A man, I say, should not be shrill –
it sullies sonnetry;
but may, instead, let iambs rage
in reciprocity.

— If now she came, could you hold back,
like dikes detaining sea?
— She cannot come. She never was,
nor is, nor yet shall be.

© Russell Bittner

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